Wikipedia:Peer review/GLaDOS/archive1

Development history

• "Before development of GLaDOS had begun, writer Erik Wolpaw was writing [the script?] for the [2005] video game Psychonauts..." The rest of the sentence ("...where they hooked up "temp dialogue", where they would go around the office to find people to hook it up") makes very little sense to me. What exactly was he (them?) doing and what is "temp dialogue"?
  • Done.
• "People found the lines funnier than they were worth, with Wolpaw commenting that "No amount of writing is funnier than this text-to-speech thing reading it." Opinion ("funnier than they were worth") and a ref-less quote
  • Done.
• Section has some very close paraphrasing ("When I was working on Psychonauts, we'd hook up this temp dialog. We'd just get people around the office to hook it up. One depressing thing I noticed is that a couple of times I'd run out of people to do, and I'd just use a voice-to-text thing. And people were laughing at that way more than what the lines were worth." compared to "writer Erik Wolpaw was writing for the video game Psychonauts, where they hooked up "temp dialogue", where they would go around the office to find people to hook it up. Once they ran out of people, however, he began using a text-to-speech program. People found the lines funnier than they were worth")
  • Done [I think; it was a bigger issue than the others, so I may have missed something or created a new flaw. :p]
    • Personally, I would just do a quick check of the section and make sure that there isn't any more close paraphrasing.
• No source for end of 1st paragraph
  • Done.
• "The team liked the voice, it being described [describing it] as "funny" and "sinister"..." Missed quotes.
  • Done.
• "It was discovered that play testers were more motivated with the voice, Wolpaw commenting that [because] they became attached to the voice."
  • Done.
• "Wolpaw commented that while GLaDOS did yell and fire rockets at the player, she fulfilled his desire for a villain who has not been "done to death"" Ref-less quote alert!
• "...they are putting her through the wringer emotionally." Sounds slangy.
• "The game was designed to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Wolpaw stated that with each new part, GLaDOS' personality changed with it."
• "However, once the player-character escapes, she begins to speak as herself, referring to herself as "I" rather than "we"." Bit odd. ---> "...she begins to speak in first-person singular rather than first-person plural."
• "Eventually, they settled [on] the design [of] used in the final version of game, the robotic figure hanging upside down."
• "The large chamberitself that the player-character encounters was the result of the team wanting to build a space that brought a great deal of attention to her."
• "Another early design was when GLaDOS was only a cube, which was used for the removed laser battle mentioned below." seems to belong with the sentence about the early designs for GLaDOS, not after the large chamber.
• "In designing the final encounter with GLaDOS, one of the important aspects to it was giving the players a predisposition to the Weighted Companion Cube." What is the Weighted Companion Cube?
• "This incarnation of the final boss was dubbed "Portal Kombat", which Swift describes as a "high intensity rocket battle"." Ref-less quote.
• 1st paragraph in Final battle has no sources
• "However, Wolpaw stated that it sucked, commenting that it sucked so much that he would not let Swift speak, citing the fact that no one was paying attention to what GLaDOS was saying." Slangy and sounds like it might be close paraphrasing.
• "Wolpaw described the pacing as horrible, stating that they would wander around lost until they found the corridor, at which point a series of pistons would spring out of the walls, which he says failed in every way imaginable." Slangy ("which he says failed in every way imaginable") and some odd sentence construction. Maybe something along the lines of "Wolpaw sharply criticized the pacing, which caused the players to wander around until they found the corridor, at which point a series of pistons would spring out of the walls."
• Caption is very long. Try condensing it to "Conceptual art of the player-character encountering GLaDOS"
• What was the "fire pit" puzzle?
• "One playtester helped them by pointing out the quality of the "fire pit" puzzle, stating that it was both dramatic and exciting, but also a difficult puzzle. Wolpaw stated that this made no sense, commenting that it was one of the easiest puzzles in the game." ---> "One playtester helped them by pointing out the quality of the "fire pit" puzzle, stating that it was both dramatic and exciting, but also a difficult puzzle."
• "He added that the battle itself was a dramatic high-point, [since it was] due to it being the first time GLaDOS directly tries to kill the player-character [and] as well as the first time that players have to use the environment to their advantage."
• "Another influence on the change from a complex battle to a simple one was a fellow Valve developer who was working on Half-Life 2: Episode Two. The developer commented that the final boss of that game would have 100 Striders, as well as allowing players to drive a car while fighting mini-Striders, following up by asking Wolpaw what he had planned for Portal's final boss.[13] Eventually, they implemented a mechanic involving a timer ticking down from six minutes, where neurotoxin would eventually kill the players' character." --->After learning about what fellow Valve developers had planned for the final boss battle in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, the Portal developers decided to implement a neurotoxin would kill the player-character in six minutes."
• "This made it easier on the writers, who only had to write six minutes of dialogue versus an infinite amount previously." An infinite amount of dialogue makes for a really long game, doesn't it? ^_^

Cultural impact

Not to be a jackass or anything, but while there's lots of good content here, it's just not written that well. It gets rambling and confusing at points, difficult to understand even for me (someone who knows video games, has beaten the game several times, and listened to all the dev. commentary.) I don't really have the time to pick through it all, but I really think the entire article needs something of a rewrite. Here's some random issues I picked out:

• "She was created by Erik Wolpaw and Kim Swift" - who are who? Some quick intro like "writers" or something is warranted.
• "While initially appearing as a voice to guide and aid the player, her words and actions become increasingly malicious, making multiple attempts to kill the player-character. She eventually is revealed to be insane, having killed the scientists who ran Aperture previously with a deadly neurotoxin before they could install her morality core. She is set to appear in the sequel, Portal 2, taking place 300 years after the player-character defeats GLaDOS and being placed back in the chamber." - this entire section seems off-kilter, grammatically speaking, and a tad wordy. 'She is set to appear in the sequel, Portal 2, taking place 300 years after the player-character defeats GLaDOS and being placed back in the chamber' - who is being placed back in the chamber, and why does the verb tense change halfway through the sentence?
• "She was created after" Starting a new paragraph means restating the subject.
• "She was universally praised for her contributions to the quality of Portal's writing" - She's a fictional character, she can't contribute to Portal's writing.
• I really think that the "Description" section needs references.
• " She has a system of morality cores installed into her, in order to prevent her from killing anyone" - ok, this is something that confused me when I played the game, but bear with me. The lead states that she killed the scientists "before they could install her morality core". But you destroy her morality core (also not the singular) in the game. So A) how many cores does she have, and B) was it installed or not?
• I'm not sure all the webcomic references are really that important in asserting the character's notability (not to mention XKCD is shoehorned in twice.)